I'm looking at flying from SFO to MEL in June of 2008, on Air New Zealand. The flights go through AKL in both directions. The flight quoted on NZ's website is about $1,300 round trip, which actually sounds quite good. (I have some new grandkids there, so this would be a fun trip)

I then wanted to stop over in AKL for several days. This option took me to a "multi-city" screen. The quoted price was over $6,000. But I would have to get off one aircraft and on another one there anyway, it's not like I want a detour via the South Pole . I'm trying to figure out what the big price difference is, when I'm not deviating in distance from the cheaper "direct" flight.

My actual intentions are to go to CHC on the way back to the States to visit my parents there, however I never got to the AKL-CHC internal leg after seeing this massive price discrepancy. Now, I could imagine if I was wanting to fly SFO-MEL-CHC-AKL-SFO, then that might cost more, I would expect that.

Can anyone shed any light on this wierd discrepancy? I could actually do a side-trip MEL-CHC-MEL for less than stopping off at AKL.

Quoting Brucek (Thread starter):This option took me to a "multi-city" screen. The quoted price was over $6,000.

Were you violating the Sunday-rule for your stay in MEL ?
If not, it might be the case, that the booking engine you used was calculating all flights as one-way (but this might have resulted in even higher fares ...).
Did you check out a different booking engine yet ?
It is rather unlikely that one of the flights you chose is already solidly booked (for June 2008). Btw, when do the Olympic games in Beijing start ... ?
-HT

Carpe diem ! Life is too short to waste your time ! Keep in mind, that today is the first day of the rest of your life !

No violation of any rule regarding minimum stays in MEL, I would be there for 3 weeks.

I'm going to call NZ next week and see if I do have something wierd going on with the booking engine. I don't believe any flightd are full, I'm getting the "web specials" on most days that are still available.

The "multi-city" option, which includes open jaw flights, appears to be the way that they treat an additional stop-over, although I could be wrong. If additional enroute stop-overs are not an issue than I'm OK, but I didn;t get thats ense when I was on their site.